A resilient Greek woman recounts her and her family's extraordinary
story at the end of her life, marked by the great historical events of
the twentieth century.
Born in 1938, Niki, the daughter of the deputy secretary general of the
Greek Communist Party, is swept up in turmoil before her first birthday:
her parents are arrested, and she joins her mother in exile on an island
near Santorini. Growing up, she experiences the Italian and German
invasion, the Nazi occupation, and the civil war that came after, often
caught between her socialist values and those of the right-wing
establishment, to which half her relatives belong.
Through her memories and the stories of her family, with roots on both
coasts of the Aegean Sea, Niki also tells the history of Greece and Asia
Minor from the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth.
Her remarkable tales, full of humor and verve in spite of hardship, are
populated by working-class heroes, privileged elites, daring
revolutionaries, and free-spirited bohemians.
